


Anise Cookies

by BuzzCat



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Tropes And Rare Pairs Challenge [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, F/M, I bend what rules I want, because I didn't want to do a bar AU and also this challenge is a year old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 22:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6028372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost every day, a man walks into Darcy's bakery, inhales deeply, and leaves. She finally calls him on it and gets a lot more of a conversation than she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anise Cookies

The bell over the door dinged and Darcy fought the urge to sigh in exasperation. Like clockwork, he walked in. The guy with the sunglasses who almost never stayed longer than thirty seconds, never walked more than two feet into the shop, and certainly never actually bought anything. He’d been coming in for months and while it had been eccentric at first, giving Darcy something to wonder about as she kneaded dough, she was not in the mood for some asshole to block her doorway. She threw down the rag she’d been using to wipe the counter and stepped around it, hands on her hips,

“So do you honestly have nothing better to do than smell my bakery, or is there some magical mystical reasoning for your presence?” Darcy said. The guy reached up and pulled his sunglasses down just far enough so he could look at her over the top,

“Well, generally when I get close to someone’s bakery, I don’t smell it, but hey, if that’s your thing…” he said and Darcy rolled her eyes. The guy pulled off his sunglasses, grinning a grin she’d seen in many a paparazzi photo, “Tony Stark. You may know me from CNN, MSNBC, and People magazine.”

“Darcy Lewis, owner of this bakery. Either buy something or get out.”

“Why so testy, young entrepreneur?” Tony asked, leaning against the backrest of a booth.

“I’ve got orders like crazy because it’s Christmas, my oven just died, and this dick who never buys anything keeps occupying space in my doorway.”

“If I bought something, would that be better?”

“Sure.” Darcy said, turning her back to return to wiping the counter. Even though she’d love nothing more than to banter with Tony Stark, she actually did have six orders of cookies to make for various holiday parties and a broken oven to fix. She reached under the counter and pulled out a tool bag, muttering to herself as she dug through it.

“Do you know what’s wrong with the oven?” asked Tony and Darcy’s head snapped up, only to find his nose inches from hers. She instinctively stepped back and pushed hair escaped from her ponytail out of her face,

“The lights are on but nobody’s home. Won’t heat up.” she said. Tony shrugged, used an arm to push himself over the counter parkour-style, grabbed her tool bag, and headed back toward the ovens. One already had cookies baking and the place smelled amazing, but the other was stone cold. Darcy followed him,

“Hey! What the hell, man?” Tony totally ignored her, crouching down and opening the oven and taking a peek at the heating coils before closing the door and prying the bottom part off to get a better look at the machine’s innards. Darcy watched, still not entirely certain how to handle the situation. Tony Stark trying to fix her busted oven hadn’t exactly entered onto her list of possible outcomes of the day. Tony pulled out a screwdriver and started fiddling around with switches and wires, muttering to himself the whole time. Darcy watched for a minute, then gave up. Eccentric billionaires were called such for a reason. When the other oven dinged, she just stepped around him to take the cookies out and put the next batch in, going back out to the front to help customers.

Twenty minutes later, Tony stood up, absentmindedly rubbing grease on jeans Darcy was sure cost more than she made in a week. He turned the oven on and sure enough, heat started cranking out. Darcy stared at it,

“Huh. Never preheated that fast before.”

“I may have made some adjustments,” Tony said, snagging a couple cookies off a tray that were cooling as he walked back out of the kitchen. Darcy followed him, grateful that it was one of the rare moments where nobody was actually in her shop. She wouldn’t have had a problem with the business a picture of Tony Stark in her restaurant would have brought, but the paparazzo would have driven her crazy. She leaned her hip against the counter,

“So why is Tony Stark, savior of the world and destroyer of panties, hanging out in my bakery every day?”

“Where did you get the recipe for your anise cookies?”

“I’ll answer yours if you’ll answer mine,” Darcy said. Tony crossed his arms and stared at her. Darcy crossed her arms and stared back. Finally, he shrugged,

“The anise cookies smell like some I’ve had before. The woman who made them said she was the only one who knew the recipe.”

“Well cool your jets, oh great and wondrous billionaire, because this recipe is a family secret. No way that someone else has it.”

“Show me the recipe.”

“No,” Darcy said. Tony rolled his eyes,

“Show me the recipe _please_?”

“Fine,” Darcy said with a smile. She went back behind the counter, rummaging around until she found the recipe box way at the back. She’d long since memorized this recipe, having eaten these cookies since childhood. She opened the box and gently placed the recipe on the table. The cardstock was yellowing and the handwriting loopy; Darcy had always thought her grandma had the best handwriting. Tony turned it around so he could read it. He was quiet, possibly for the first time since Darcy had started talking to him. He looked up at her,

“You have more recipes from her?”

“Yeah. My grandma kinda went nuts with cooking and baking,” Darcy answered. Tony nodded and grabbed a spare piece of paper, writing as he said,

“I will pay you this much,” he slid the paper back across to Darcy, “if you will spend one day a week baking in the Tower, making any recipe you have from your grandma,” Darcy looked at the number and her eyes bugged,

“Dude, that’s…a lot. I’ll only be baking, not stripping or something?”

“I mean, if you want to don’t let me stop you,” Tony said with a waggle of his eyebrows, “but yeah. Just baking,” There were a couple zeros behind that number and Darcy was already dreaming of the kind of apartment she could get if she was making that much extra each week. She held out her hand,

“Deal.”

“Awesome. Start on Saturday?”

“I’ll be there,” Darcy said. Tony nodded and turned around, walking out the door and Darcy thought she could detect a new spring in his step. She smiled down at the notecard and resisted the urge to kiss it,

“Thank you, Grandma Jarvis.”

**Author's Note:**

> Seeing as I haven't been to a bar, I didn't feel that I could properly write a bartender AU, so this became a bakery AU because let's be real, bakery sounds like a lot more fun than bar. To me, at least.


End file.
